The Problem with Christians

[Pat Mustard]

 The problem is with you, and not with my god who decided to make some bullshit rules about who you can have sex with.  

Like having sex with children? Are they bullshit rules too?

God didn't make that rule, so no it's not bullshit. In fact to show you how evil your god is, he clearly mandates that his people rape the young girls of their defeated enemies:

They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. 8 Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. 9 The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.

13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

So before you go on at us about morality, fucktard, have a word with the little delusional schizophrenic voice inside your head about your own morality.

[Cyberman]

I bet that's why all those priests seem to see no problem with molesting kids and actively impeding any investigations into the ones who do. "Well, the bible doesn't say it's wrong, so God's probably ok with it. I'll have a good hard pray about it later and ask for forgiveness, just in case."

[Esquilax]

 The problem is with you, and not with my god who decided to make some bullshit rules about who you can have sex with.  

Like having sex with children? Are they bullshit rules too?

Holy fucking shit, do you want to make a larger leap in order to poison the well?

I'll give you a hint: pederasty hurts people, homosexuality does not.

You don't get to be happy, because God is more important."

I guess that also applies to people who want to have sex with minors. Should we feel sorry for "minor attracted" people who were "made that way?" This is the argument they are putting out there in order to get their grubby little hands on innocent children.

If something is an inherent biological drive for a person, and that drive would cause harm to another, then why wouldn't a certain level of empathy be engendered? I get that it's fundamentally icky, but if it's not something they have any control over then they've been placed in a situation beyond their control that stacks the social deck against them incredibly. Now, given the inherent harm in actually obeying that drive, we should still have an ironclad expectation that they not just go along with what they want, and that they do deny themselves, but you can abhor the action while still recognizing that the desire may not be something actively under their control.

I'm not, by the way, saying that pedophilia is actually some inborn trait necessarily, because I'm not prepared to do the research on that here, just that there's a lot more nuance than your desperate mud slinging would suggest. I actually do know that there's a group of people out there that are attracted to children yet abstain from acting on it out of a desire to keep people from harm. I saw an article about them not too long ago; do they not deserve some sympathy for being in a position out of their control that adversely affects them, even when they resist as best they can and get treatment?

In my country, in order to get gender reassignment surgery, you have to have a doctor diagnose you with gender dysphoria. Which is a mental disorder where you feel that you are the wrong gender to what your genes and anatomy otherwise indicate. So if this is a disorder, shouldn't we be trying to correct it? That would mean trying to harmonize the mind with physical reality. As far as I know, gender dysphoria is the only condition where the treatment is to go with the disease rather than to fight it. Doesn't sound like good medicine to me.

Why are you presuming that transitioning is not a cure? The symptoms go away, the underlying problem is addressed and the patient incurs no adverse affects: even within the context of your analogy, that seems like a far more effective cure- in fact, the definition of a cure- than anything your bigoted pals might come up with. In fact, we've already seen the harm your ilk causes, and we've seen the benefits that come from not simply assuming dysphoria to be a negative thing based on some old book: why would we ever go for the harmful option knowing what we know now?

Moreover, the mind is a process of the brain, which is part of the physical reality, so why prioritize other parts of the body over the brain? At best, you've got two conflicting physiological signals- the brain saying one thing, and the body saying another- so my question is: why are you favoring the genitals over the brain? What reason do you have for the assumptions riddled throughout what passes for an argument from you?

[AJW333]

God didn't make that rule, so no it's not bullshit.

Sure he did. The Jews weren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage and no one in Israel married children.

In fact to show you how evil your god is, he clearly mandates that his people rape the young girls of their defeated enemies:

'Numbers 31 7-18'
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

This doesn't say to rape the girls. As I indicated, sex was forbidden outside marriage so these girls would have been spared and married at a later stage.

So before you go on at us about morality, fucktard, have a word with the little delusional schizophrenic voice inside your head about your own morality.

The "delusional voice" inside my head says that despite what I would like to say or do, I need to exercise self-control, exhibit patience and kindness and demonstrate the love of God.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Duplicate. Deleted.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

God didn't make that rule, so no it's not bullshit.

Sure he did. The Jews weren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage and no one in Israel married children.

And you think the same status as a "proper" Israelite woman was applied to captives taken in war? Get real.

As for "no one married children", the age of 12 is when the Bat Mitzvah takes place, announcing that she is a grown woman. Think that's not when they were married, back in the day?

In fact to show you how evil your god is, he clearly mandates that his people rape the young girls of their defeated enemies:

'Numbers 31 7-18'
15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

This doesn't say to rape the girls. As I indicated, sex was forbidden outside marriage so these girls would have been spared and married at a later stage.

I don't see anywhere that says sex is forbidden outside of marriage, in the Biblical passages. I do see a lot of stuff chirping on about the importance of virginity in your bride-to-be, however. So you honestly think, in the midst of a brutal war, that the purpose of saving only the virgins (and murdering anyone who's not) is to save them for later in order to be properly married? Get real, man!

So before you go on at us about morality, fucktard, have a word with the little delusional schizophrenic voice inside your head about your own morality.

The "delusional voice" inside my head says that despite what I would like to say or do, I need to exercise self-control, exhibit patience and kindness and demonstrate the love of God.

Wow, if only that was the case. Instead, what you do is soak up a lot of ancient tribal Israelite prejudices (almost at random, it seems to us, anyway, since y'all don't worry too much about divorce or try to pass laws banning "taking the LORD's name in vain", etc.) that you use to excuse all sorts of astounding hatreds, which you call "love".

You "demonstrate the love of God" by telling people who are marginalized (often to the point of suicide, so strong is our human instinct to Belong) that they should remain hidden from view in the closet, or become just like you, in order to not be hit with theocratic laws that take away their rights simply because the majority feels "uncomfortable" about them... with all the nausea-inducing post-hoc explanations that almost explain to others who question it that it's not "really" as hate-filled as it seems. When you are stopped from doing so (as with the recent SCOTUS case about marriage laws that exclude), you whine about how you're under attack, even though you're the only ones really harming people. Whine all you like, but I don't see any Christians killing themselves because they just can't take the way they're treated by society for their identity.

You "demonstrate the love of God" by hijacking government ceremonies which are supposed to be for all of us (not to mention our money and our national motto being "edited" to include your God, during the 1950s, by you people) with prayers that have no reason to be a part of the ceremony except to honor your own traditions (yes, even if you sometimes tolerate prayers from other groups), and try in every other way to coerce this country to let you retain the dominance of the culture you enjoyed before the Enlightenment and the Civil Rights movement(s) began to chip away at it... which you then, annoyingly, refer to as being persecuted. Gag me.

You "demonstrate the love of God" by spreading false and misleading information about the claims of science (often because you don't know the actual claims of science, granted, because you believed someone else who lied to you, within your religious social circles), attacking those who prefer to be skeptical about the claims of others and believing what they believe only as thoroughly as it has been demonstrated to be factual...and being willing to change our minds in the light of new evidence. Yet we are the least-trusted people, in polls taken on the subject; easier to be a Muslim or Christian homosexual and attain office, in this country! That's not even counting what families and small communities (or the entire Southern USA) do to people who openly admit they are atheists... even though a significant percent of us are Secular Humanists or something similar, who believe in making the world a better place through human cooperation and kindness. Christians vilify us endlessly with caricatures like God is not Dead (and its sequel!), which make us look like the worst people imaginable just so y'all can enjoy your martyr complexes.

And so on and so on, ad infinitum.

Oh, yes, we see how you demonstrate God's love. Might be part of why (other than our own literacy) we think your God is a monster.

[Reforged]

Has anyone made a "final solution" joke that plays on the erroneous idea that Hitler was an atheist?
I'd check myself but... meh.

[robvalue]

This has highlighted a problem with religion in general.

It seems many people get programmed to believe that they are inherently bad, and will act badly, unless they "follow God" or whatever. Statistically I would expect this to actually be false say 95%+ of the time. But belief becomes reality for the indoctrinated person, so they dare not "take the risk".

It's very sad. Another example of breaking your legs and selling you a crutch. You only have to look at countries with a significant atheist population to see this is nonsense fear-mongering propaganda.

Worse though is when certain things are labelled "bad" by the religion, even if they are actually totally harmless. Then it kind of becomes a vicious self-fulfilling circle, with non believers being seen as "bad", as well as being extremely divisive and encouraging binary thinking.

[Silver]

Yet, they follow and believe in this deity while still behaving badly.

Is it that they have adopted this idea that they are beyond reproach much as god is, that his divine commands are theirs to make certain are upheld no matter the human consequences?

[robvalue]

That they do.

I'm not sure what the answer is. It's hard for me to say having never experienced it. Maybe one of our ex-theists can enlighten me.

I guess they think following God is making them do those bad things less, even if that's not actually true. If, for example, someone has been indoctrinated from birth, they will have nothing to compare to. So they can simply be told they would do the bad things more, if they didn't "follow God", and be programmed to believe it.

Kind of like everyone generally assumes their childhood is normal, until they have someone else's to compare to.